This is Eve. Yesterday, I featured a post by Michael Hudson. How the United States has used its control of agriculture, particularly the grain supply, to strengthen its hegemonyHere we see another form of exploitation: the acquisition of productive land in low-income countries by the wealthy. Jomo cites data from 2008, but the practice was happening much earlier. I recall meeting a hedge fund manager around 2000 whose fund was buying farmland in Africa and Latin America.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram, former United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Economic Development. Originally published in Jomo’s website
Since 2008, farmland purchases have doubled farmland prices around the world, squeezing family farmers and other poor rural communities. Such land grabs exacerbate inequality, poverty and food insecurity.
Oppression of land and peasants
a New IPES-Food Report It highlights the land grabs (including those ostensibly for “environmental” purposes), the financial instruments used, and some of the significant impacts.
Powerful governments, financiers, speculators and agribusinesses are seizing the opportunities to gain control of arable land, and the report notes that the food price hikes and financial crisis of 2007-2008 have spurred further land acquisitions.
Quantitative easing and financialization after the 2008 global financial crisis have enabled further land grabs, with investors, agri-food companies and even sovereign wealth funds acquiring farmland all over the world.
Agricultural companies and other investors are seeking to generate more profits from the land, which they are urging the government to allow them to buy up. Arable land is used for cash crops, natural resource extraction, mining, real estate and infrastructure development, and “green” projects such as biofuels.
Land scarcity is taking new forms, with most large-scale land deals converting agricultural land intended for food production to be replaced by environmentally damaging “industrial agriculture,” exacerbating rural poverty and migration.
New land struggles are forcing small farmers, indigenous peoples, pastoralists and rural communities off their land or limiting their access to it, exacerbating rural poverty, food insecurity and land inequality. The marginalization of local land users is undermining the viability of family farms.
“Green grabs” are the acquisition of land by governments and corporations for questionable large-scale reforestation, biodiversity offsetting, carbon sequestration, conservation, biofuels and “green hydrogen” projects. Demands for water and other resources also threaten food production.
While land grabs have slowed recently, underlying pressures and trends continue: the pandemic, the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and government and market reactions have resurrected alarmist “food shortage” narratives to justify further land grabs.
Investing in dispossession
Agricultural investment increased tenfold between 2005 and 2018. By 2023, 960 investment funds specializing in food and agriculture assets will hold real estate worth more than $1 million. $150 billion.
Pension funds and insurance companies made $15 billion, or about 45%, of total farmland investment in 2018. Between 2005 and 2017, pension funds, insurance funds and endowments invested in farmland. Farmland $45 billion.
Not surprisingly, land prices in North America have been rising steadily for 20 years. In CanadaFrom 2008 to 2022, Land prices have almost doubled Globally, there has been a three-fold increase in Central and Eastern Europe.
Pension funds and other private investments UK farmland prices double Between 2010 and 2015. More recently, since the pandemic, investment in U.S. farmland has doubled.
Currently, the largest 1% of farms worldwide own 70% of the farmland. In Latin America, 55% of farms own only 3% of the farmland.
More than half of the farmland thus gained is used to produce water-intensive crops. One-fifth of large land transactions 87% of those who claim to be “green” High biodiversity!
Mining accounted for 14% of large land deals in the past decade.
Rising demand for rare earth elements and other critical minerals has driven mining on former farmland, exacerbating environmental degradation and conflict.
Rather than protecting the interests of the state, society and communities, regulations appear to be protecting criminals. The terms of these deals often make things worse. That’s why foreign companies have successfully sued the Colombian government for trying to block large-scale mining projects.
Grabbing green land
Some governments and large corporations insist on complying with Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) standards. They cite sustainability, including climate targets, to justify elitist conservation and carbon offset schemes.
More than half One in five government carbon removal pledges involve smallholder and Indigenous land. “Green grabs” for carbon offsets, biodiversity, conservation and biofuel projects account for one in five large land deals.
The government has committed to absorbing carbon dioxide into the earth’s atmosphere, nearly 1.2 billion hectares, the equivalent of the world’s arable land area! Climate benefits are modest, but the problematic carbon offset market Four times more likely in the next seven yearsIt encourages further land grabbing.
Carbon offset and biodiversity markets are facilitating these transactions and drawing major polluters into the land market: oil giant Shell alone has invested more than $450 million in offset projects.
African land grabs
Land scarcity is a global phenomenon, affecting different places in different ways. Land grabs have had a major impact on sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, while land inequalities are growing in Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America, and South Asia.
Susan Chomba and Million Belay The study found that around 1,000 large-scale land deals have taken place in Africa since 2000. Mozambique accounted for 110 deals, followed by Ethiopia, Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Several 25 million hectares This involves Blue Carbon, a company run by Dubai’s royal family that has bought forest and farmland rights to sell carbon offsets, provided by five English-speaking African governments: a fifth of Zimbabwe and a tenth of Liberia, Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia.
Large-scale land deals put indigenous and pastoralist communities at greater risk: in Ethiopia, Ghana and other countries, they force farmers to work smaller plots, become wage laborers or migrate, undermining their ability to feed themselves, their communities and others.
Africa’s smallholder farmers, pastoralists and indigenous communities have long protected their lands and biodiversity. But most lack the rights and the means to feed Africa and protect them more effectively, let alone improve, climate action. Thus, the climate crisis is being used against Africa’s rural communities.
